Blood Of Angels (47 page)

Lee started walking towards him. 'But it started a lot earlier, right? Sure, my parents have something to do with it. I got that part. I don't really understand it, but I got it. But now I'm talking about the night where me and some friends went to a parking lot up in Santa Ynez and someone I've known since I was a kid got his fucking head blown off. That wasn't some random crew of gang-bangers from upstate. That was you.'

The other guy was standing still now, his back straight. He didn't look like a kid any more.

'What's your point?'

'My
point
is that you or one of those other guys killed my friend.'

'Great work, smart-boy. Yeah. It was me. It was my shot.'

'And so right from that night you people have been screwing me around. Pushing me in this direction and that. Fucking up my entire life.'

'You never
had
a life,' the guy said, and Lee realized this person had never had anything but contempt for him. 'You've been bought and paid for since day one. Since the day you were…'

Lee threw himself at him.

Lee Hudek was good at fighting. Lee had what it took. He was strong and he had confidence and he was willing to hurt people. But this other guy had far more than that. He actively enjoyed it. He came back at Lee like a switch being thrown.

Both were silent, intent, making little more than grunts. Lee's first couple of blows landed in the ballpark but after that the other man slipped into movements that only long and dedicated practice can make second nature. Lee knew enough not to try to land Hollywood-style punches. Fighting isn't about looking cool. Fighting is about fucking somebody up. Lee knew you grabbed at hair and clothes and eye sockets and tried to bring someone down to the ground as fast as possible and then got dirty with kicks and fists and any sharp objects you had to hand. But he just couldn't seem to get a hold on this guy. Wherever he went for, he just wasn't there — and in the meantime the guy was getting closer to pulling Lee down, and kept cracking Lee's face and stomach with his fists and elbows and the sides of his hands.

Finally one of these caught Lee square in the throat and he couldn't breathe. He slipped down to one knee and had barely time to yank in one long rasping breath before a foot scythed up and caught him full across the face.

He fell over onto his back, head spinning. He saw the other guy standing above him, a gun in his hand.

'I'm not supposed to shoot you,' he said. He was barely out of breath. 'But I might anyway. I can always dig the bullet out.'

'Fuck you.'

'Yeah, right,' the guy said, and stamped on his head. And then did it again a couple more times.

When Lee was unconscious the guy put his gun back in the pouch in his sweater, leaned down and got his hands under Hudek's armpits. He pulled him quickly up the corridor to the far end. He knew the layout of the school intimately, having studied its plans for many hours in the previous weeks. He knew exactly where he needed to go. A storage cupboard just around the corner. Wasn't supposed to happen quite like this, but he'd had no choice. It would do. It was within tolerance.

He opened the door to the cupboard and pushed Hudek's body in. Closed the door on him, and locked it with the external bolt. Nobody would be trying to get in from the outside.

He finished just in time, about ten seconds before he heard one of the troublesome guys from the principal's office come running in the building, shouting about fire. This was not good. The Upright Man hadn't mentioned this kind of trouble once the gig actually started, and these two guys were just not going away. These looked like they were in it for the full mile, especially the one who looked like Paul, and who he was theoretically not supposed to shoot.

He got himself in position and reloaded his gun. Instructions were always open to interpretation. Whatever happened next, he had no intention of dying cheaply.

That was not what people like him did.

I was only a few yards behind John as he ran back into the first building. He split right and I went left, opening doors and telling people to get out. Everybody kept doing what they were told. It was great. John did his half very fast, and I still wondered whether he'd seen someone and was in here partly to give chase. I left the last classroom on my corridor unopened and just banged on the door. They'd get the message — the noise of departing kids was getting loud. I pushed my way through the emerging crowds and ran up the stairs after Zandt. A whole crowd of children started rushing down as I was turning the corner, and I had to put my head down and shove up against the tide as fast as I could.

'John?'

'He's up here,' he shouted, heading fast down the upper corridor. I assumed he must mean the person we'd encountered in the principal's office. I pushed my way after him. Finally got to the end of the corridor and confronted a heavy door I hadn't noticed the first time.

On the other side I found myself in another section of the building, at a right angle to the first. There was a set of three long, frosted glass windows on both sides of the corridor. More science labs.

John was flat up against the wall, gun held against his chest. He flapped at me with his other hand, keeping it low. I got the message and moved quickly up against the wall on the other side of the corridor.

'He's in the one on the left,' he said, quietly.

'So leave him there.'

John looked blankly at me.

'I don't care about this guy,' I said. 'We just need the school cleared and locked down. The police or FBI can deal with it. I'm done here. I'm going…'

'You've got nowhere else
to
go, Ward, and this guy could lead us to Paul.'

I hesitated, and heard a clanking from within the lab. We held our breath together, guns trained on the door down the far end. Then I realized it would make sense to pick different targets and swept mine across to aim at the middle of the three opaque glass panels on that side.

'Okay. Let's get him. But be careful.'

Zandt almost smiled. 'I've always valued your advice.'

'You know what? Scrub that. Be as rash as you like.'

Shooting out the frosted windows would either reveal the guy's position or make it harder for him to hide. It would also make it easier for him to fire accurately at us. The alternative was going low up the corridor, keeping under the level of the glass, getting to the door to the lab and just taking it from there.

We did both. John went down low and scooted up the corridor. Meanwhile I fired at each of the three windows in turn, starting with the furthest in the hope this would drive him back towards me, deeper into the room away from the door. As the second window collapsed into shards I caught a glimpse of him heading exactly that way. As soon as I'd shot out the third window I headed after John.

By the time I was halfway there John was standing in the doorway and he and the guy were shooting at each other. I saw John knocked back against the wall, and I turned and emptied my gun into the room. The first couple of shots were random but then I saw the guy trying to get behind one of the long benches and I held still and tight and kept pulling the trigger.

When I stopped firing he wasn't firing back.

John held his arm up and I saw he'd just been grazed across the wrist. I reloaded and then the two of us moved carefully into the lab.

We walked slowly down opposite sides, towards the back, and rounded the last bench at about the same time. At the corner I found a handgun with a snub silencer lying on the floor, and kicked it out of harm's way.

The skateboard guy was sitting wedged up against the back wall, arms straight down by his side. There was a lot of blood on the floor. More was joining it.

'Where is he?' I asked him.

The guy shook his head, businesslike. 'You're too late,' he said, thickly. 'It's started. The Day of Angels.'

'Not for you,' John told him. 'Your days are coming to an end. You're going to tell us where Paul is. I don't give a damn how badly we have to behave to get this information. You're going to tell us if I have to start shooting your limbs off one by one.'

Another shake of the head. John moved his arms so his gun was pointing at the man's leg.

'I'm not kidding,' he said. He wasn't.

The guy closed his eyes for a moment, as if summoning strength. I raised my gun to keep him pinned.

Slowly the man lifted his arm.

'Don't do that,' I said. 'Keep your hands where they are.'

But then suddenly he moved much more quickly, slipping his right hand into the pouch in the front of his sweater. It was out again in an instant, holding a knife.

'You're not getting anywhere with that,' John said.

The man took a deep breath. 'Enjoy your world while you can,' he said, and then plunged the knife into the left side of his neck.

John lunged forward and tried to pull it back out, but the man had committed his last bit of strength. Once the knife had gone in as far as it could, he yanked it back out from left to right.

The mess was bad, and he was dead very quickly.

===OO=OOO=OO===

John searched the body. He found a wallet with a little money but no ID. He found a half pack of cigarettes, one of which I took and lit. He found something that was evidently a compact radio, but one of my shots seemed to have hit it square on and it was misshapen and bent and I couldn't get it to make any noise. Presumably he'd used this to contact the fake cop outside, the one now in the trunk of his own car.

There was nothing to lead us to Nina.

I turned angrily away from the mess to the window along the other side of the room. This gave a view down on the open space to the rear of the school, and I was relieved to see the near end was full of milling kids. More were joining them from various buildings.

The children were being organized into neat ranks within a marked-out area in the shadow of the school underneath my window. A few hundred of them, maybe. The top end of the open space was clear.

And a car had just driven in the gate.

At first I thought, thank Christ — the cops have finally arrived and we can get out of here, but it was a dumb thought that only lasted a nanosecond. The local cops wouldn't drive around in a large black car with windows tinted black.

'John,' I said. 'Come look at this. Quickly.'

The car drove across the open space at a measured pace. Nobody was watching it. Everyone was too busy marshalling each other into orderly rows, enjoying the lark that fire drills always seem to be.

'Oh Christ,' John said. The car cruised over to the back of the school and entered the sloping runway we'd seen the pizzas taken down. Within seconds it had disappeared from view as if it had never been.

'Basement,' I said. 'Or loading area. Why is he bringing her…'

'The bomb hasn't been planted yet,' John said, dismally. 'We just saw it arrive.'

A car full of explosives is a very big bang. Best case it would take the school down to shower in burning chunks over the kids in the open space. Worst, depending on the layout and extent of the basement area, it could detonate right underneath them.

We hadn't achieved anything at all. Paul was still at least one step ahead.

I grabbed the handle on the window but it had been painted shut many years before. I banged on the window with both fists but no one was paying any attention.

'Leave it,' John said. 'We know where we've got to go.'

We ran out into the corridor and back into the other arm of the building. I thought I heard someone shouting somewhere as we sped through but I couldn't work out where from and didn't have time to worry about it.

We raced down the steps to the ground floor and searched for access to a lower level. There wasn't any. We ran out onto the lawn and around into the main structure, turned left into a corridor that went past a big open space that seemed to be the cafeteria.

Which meant kitchens. We dodged in and across it to where the food was dispensed from. Behind this was the food preparation area, battered stoves, big refrigerators. And way in back, a door to a stairway. We got out our guns, and went down into the basement.

When Paul directed the driver to drive into the back of the school, Nina realized that anything she said would be a waste of time. Pulling the car down into this subterranean space could mean only one thing. She knew there was no appeal to reason she could make, and that this was not because Paul was too insane to follow an argument. He'd comprehend perfectly, but disagree. Like Wittgenstein said, if the lion could talk, we would not understand him. Paul had reached this place through his own rationality, simple and logical steps in a mind that was simply wired differently and organized around other values. This thing was going to happen. There was an almost sexual charge about his conviction now, and Nina realized she was probably entering the last few minutes of her life. Good to have spoken to Ward, then, however briefly. Shame he had not picked up on her reference to the school, but it had been a subtle hint. There really had been a gun at her head.

There wasn't a great deal she could do about it now either way. Not much she could do about anything. She had to just be, for whatever time she had left.

Sometimes the decision not to pursue hopeless action is the bravest act of all.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The car was driven down into a space beneath the building, four cars wide and lined either side with access stairways and a series of bays twenty feet deep. Parts of the walls were lined with old, shiny tile. The lighting was gloomy and intermittent. The driver pulled the car into a bay at the end, next to a wall with an archway leading to a further section of the basement. The engine was turned off.

Paul turned to Nina.

'Upside is that it's going to be very fast,' he said. 'Pow. Vaporized. Downside is you're going to have to wait for it. I could just kill you, of course. Partly I'm just not inclined to make things easier for you, but on the other hand I suspect you'd like to keep those moments, however imperfect they may be. Correct?'